THE POETRY OF DON BLANDING, POPULAR
VERSIFIER

by Mildred Maureen Maloney

CHAPTER I
BIOGRAPHY

Donald Benson Blanding, later known as Don Blanding,
the Vagabond Poet, was born November 7, 1894, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma.
His father, who had taken part in the opening of the Cherokee Strip, was
Hugh Ross Blanding, a lawyer and a judge for many years in Oklahoma. His
mother was Ida Kimble Blanding.

Don was the last of four children and is the last of his line; his
brothers, James and Hugh, and his sister, Jessie, did not marry. These
children were of Scotch-Irish-English, French-Dutch-German descent, and
had the pioneering blood of early Oklahoma in their veins.

Restlessness is Blanding's natural heritage. Since the Fourteenth
Century, when the name was Blondin, the family has been on the move to new
fields, always westward -- from Normandy to England, to New England, to
Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, then southwest to Oklahoma. The
Blandings were always interested in places while they were growing and
developing, moving on as soon as the routine of settled living made it
monotonous. Don has inherited this tendency: he is interested in doing
something until he knows he can do it well; then he goes on to something
new. He says that he loathes repetition.

When Don was seven years of age the Blandings moved from Kingfisher to
Lawton, Oklahoma, a new town which had sprung up, mushroom-like,
overnight, on the southwestern prairies. It was a lottery town (people
drew lots for land) with a motley population.

"The story of Don's childhood is the story of this wild little frontier
town, alive with color and excitement."1 He lived a typical
prairie boy's life, getting his pleasures from hunting, fishing, camping,
round-ups, and barbecues, and putting up with the prairie fires, cyclones,
and droughts. His outdoor life developed him into a tall, strong youth,
and his early friendships with the Comanche and Apache Indians were
invaluable. The Comanche chief, Quannah parker, the bandit, Al Jennings,
and other well-known Southwest characters were his heroes. John Loco, the
famous Apache Indian guide, showed him secrets of the Wichita mountains
and of prairie life.

The windows of the boy's room faced north and he could look over the
prairies to the Wichita mountains, which he grew to love with a deep
affection. To this day he would not live where there are no mountains.

Blanding read constantly -- any literature he could get -- and he always
drew pictures. Every blank space in schoolbooks was covered with
sketches. His mother encouraged his artistic ideas, as she had painted
well (although not professionally) when a young woman.

The first money Don earned was sixty dollars, from making Indian heads on
leather. With this small fortune he went to Yellowstone Park in 1909, to
work through the summer season. He returned to the Park several times.

He was a good student in the subjects he enjoyed: English, history, and
languages. He disliked chemistry and mathematics, but having a "Kodak
mind" he was able to snap-shot impressions and keep them in storage until
needed; thus he usually made good grades. In 1912 Don graduated from the
Lawton, Oklahoma, High School. He had no ambition to be a writer. He
knew that he wanted to be an artist and was determined to achieve his
goal.

Under an agreement with his family to try the business world before
deciding to be an artist, he went into a bank in Bend, Oregon. He loved
the beautiful country around bend, which is on the eastern slopes of the
snow-covered Cascade Mountains, but at the end of the year, as the
business world held no attractions, he went to the Art Institute of
Chicago.

During the Art Institute days he absorbed new color and ideas. He lived
on the Chicago North side and knew Ben Hecht, Maxwell Bodenheim, Sherwood
Anderson, and others of the Chicago group who were then coming to the
fore. While doing the back-drop for one of Ben Hecht's early plays,
Publico, he was overcome by heat, turpentine, and gas fumes from an
old garage in which he was working, and although he finished the painting,
was so ill that he was unable to see the performance. For several years
he lived this Bohemian life, with interruptions to wander through the West
and Northwest, acting in little theater companies, teaching drawing, or
working as a laborer.

He had a deep love for the theater, but no desire to go on the state
permanently because of the repetitious quality of acting. However, he
ushered in theaters and acted as "super" in Grand Opera in order to see
and hear the Operas and to study the technique of great actors. When his
family would send him five dollars to buy shoes he would put folded
newspapers in the soles of his old shoes and spend the money on a good
seat at the Opera. He would not sit in the gallery when he had money to
buy a better seat. Mary Garden and Geraldine Farrar of Opera, and Elsie
Ferguson of the stage, were objects of heroine-adoration. Blanding later
wrote a poem to Garden, "Mary Garden" in LetUsDream.

In 1915, on his way back to Oklahoma from Canada, Blanding happened to be
passing through Kansas City, and having a few hours to wait between
trains, boarded a street car, and chanced to see the billings of
TheBirdofParadise with Lenore Ulrich in
the role of Luana. He went to the theater. Enchanted with the Hawaiian story, music, and
atmosphere, he returned to the railway station to inquire, "How much to
Hawaii?" He learned that it was five days and ninety dollars from San
Francisco. Within a week he was on his way.

Winifred Howe, of the Monterey Peninsula Herald, quotes Blanding:
"I landed in the Islands with five dollars in my pocket, but I've been
broke in more languages than any one I know ... and what does it
matter?"2

From 1915 to 1928 Hawaii was his home, although he did not stay there
longer than two years at a time. In fact, he has not stayed longer than
two years at a time in any one place since 1912, but he often returns to
favorite spots.

In Hawaii he worked as a newspaper man, producer of Little Theater plays,
sign painter, portrait painter, and so on.

When the United States entered the war he went into the army as a private
in Company I, 2nd Infantry, and was discharged, a Second Lieutenant, at
Camp Grant, Illinois, after the Armistice. He then spent a year as Head
of the Rockford, Illinois Art Guild before returning to Hawaii.

Blanding has been to Hawaii five times, to the Orient, and to London and
Paris to study. he has lived in the United States in every city and
village which he has found interesting, from New York to Hollywood. He
loves the South Seas and the Orient because he finds color and life more
stimulating there. Africa and South America lie ahead to be seen and
known.

In Honolulu, while doing some advertising drawings for the Charles R.
Frazier Advertising company, he was given a job on the copy-desk as a
fill-in. There he had to turn out a daily jingle for
Aji-No-Moto, a Japanese condiment, which was being
advertised through the Company. For two years he wrote of foods,
personalities, recipes, and so on, (the Condiment Shelf from the poem
"Vagabond's House" is one of these verses) and got into the habit of
thinking in verse terms and rimes. During this time he also wrote a
number of poems which he published under the title LeavesFromaGrassHouse. This went to many
editions, as did his other books published in
the Islands: ParadiseLoot and FlowersoftheRainbow.

In 1927 Blanding launched the idea of Lei Day in Hawaii, and the holiday
was so popular that in 1929 the day was made official. May Day was the
date set for the day when everyone in the Islands wears and gives leis.
These flower garlands were woven and worn by Hawaiians so long ago that
there is no record of the beginning of the custom. As Blanding says in
HulaMoons:

No feast, holiday or dance was complete without
a plenitude of leis, and a boat departure or arrival
was the occasion for extra effort in lei making. It
was the symbol of Aloha, which means love, and is the
key-word of Hawaii.3

Don was once commissioned to write an article on a beautiful villa in
Honolulu by the DecorativeArtsMagazine. After the
owner had graciously taken him through the villa he returned to the
newspaper office. A friend asked him if he were not "green with envy".
Blanding replied: "No, I came out with everything I wanted." He meant
that he had enjoyed the beauty and would possess the memory of it forever.
This is the way he has always enjoyed beauty. He has had many beautiful
things, but after getting the full benefit of them he has passed them on
to friends, for a vagabond cannot keep all the things he loves and picks
up in his wanderings. Blanding hates to put things in storage. He says,
"Things are only good, alive, when used and enjoyed." The one rule that
Blanding believes a vagabond must learn if he would be happy in his
"vagabonding" he expresses in these lines from the self portrait of the
vagabond, in "Vagabond's Road":

Ready to bid love greeting or farewell
With the same light gesture.4

The same idea is expressed in his poem "Drifters", in the
Vagabond'sHouse volume.

Many of the Hawaiian poems, such as "Fragment", were not written in the
Islands, but when the author was away and homesick for Hawaii.

The Hawaiian friends of Blanding gave him the rare distinction of a
Hawaiian name, "Alohi Lani", which means the light which one sees shining
down from behind intervening clouds upon the earth below; the path of the
sun, reflected, before you see the sun itself. The Hawaiians knew that
Blanding, by his art and writings, would make the Islands known to people
before they had seen them; hence the name.

Armine Von Tempski (Mrs. Allan Ball) is one of Don's oldest and best
friends from the Islands. She was born on the second largest Island,
Maui, and has taught Blanding much about her Islands. Von Tempski has
written Lava, Dust, Fire, and other stories and
articles about the Hawaiian Islands. Hula is her best-known work, for it was filmed.
She is now living and writing in Hollywood, California.

The artist Kimo Wilder, another friend of Blanding's and a native of the
Islands, was a descendant of an old missionary family. Wilder
Avenue in Honolulu is named for this family. Blanding wrote "At St.
Clement's Church On Wilder Avenue" to Wilder, and "Tropical Sunset", in
description of a sight which he had watched from Wilder's house on
Tantalus. Kimo Wilder was known the world over as a joyous and lusty
person, and no one mourned his death more than Blanding.

In the "magic of his mind" Blanding employs the Midas touch and turns lead
to gold. He firmly believes that he has learned the secret of laughter.
In Hawaii a multi-millionaire picked him up when he was literally "out at
the elbows" and took him for a ride. When the ride was over the man
offered him a million dollars if he would teach him his secret of
laughter. Blanding told him that it was something all the money in the
world could not buy. But, with his generous spirit, he spreads as much
laughter and happiness as he can by his writings, lectures, and general
good will. He has never neglected to answer a letter, particularly "fan"
mail or notes from people who are unhappy. James Neill Northe says of
him:

He is good to people; he never forgets them,
whether it is a little dried-up old maid in Iowa,
a frustrated, bewildered housewife in Missouri, a
very brittle opera star in New York, a movie queen
whose life he once saved when she was a very little
girl, or the thousands of adoring admirers. They
are all a part of him.5

The song of the weary wanderer, "Tired Vagabond", is dedicated to "Jim and
Margaret Northe", editors of Silhouettes magazine and his very dear
friends. They have a room in their home called "Don Blanding's Memory
Room" in which are sketches and other one time possessions which he has
given them. The Northes live in Ontario, California, sixty miles from
Hollywood, and besides editing their notable little magazine (for which
Blanding designs the covers) and conducting a school of Music, Mr. Northe
has a literary page in the Ontario Herald called "Warp and Woof".
Northe says: "His last book, MemoryRoom, takes its name
from our attic, for we have mementos and souvenirs of Don Blanding the
world over."6

People are continually writing asking Blanding if he minds if they use the
name "Vagabond's House" for their summer homes and mountain cottages.
They mention that they have treasures similar to those he had in his
House, such as a favorite picture or a Chinese bowl, and that they have
dogs named for his "Boreas" and "Mickey". Of course, he always gives
permission to use the name, and says that he is glad that he has been able
to give them a little something to make them happy.

In 1929 Blanding sailed for New York, where he established a studio.
"Vagabond's House" was a real house in New York. Blanding found it when
he was wandering down East 40th Street. Among a number of old brownstone
houses he noticed one with a door of his favorite color (bright blue),
and, finding the door unlocked, he walked through the rooms. When he
discovered a studio, thirty-five by forty feet, with a slanting roof, he
knew that it was his house. When he inquired about renting it he learned
that it had once been arranged and lived in by Duncan Phyfe. He moved in
immediately and lived there with the treasures described in the poem,
"Vagabond's House".

This house was a wish-fancy fulfilled. Blanding has what he calls a
"pack-rat" instinct for collecting. He had dreamed of a house where he
might collect all his dear, useless possessions together, and finally his
dream came true. When Vagabond's House and all his other houses and
studios have been left behind while he roams the earth, he has given his
belongings to friends. Several of the things he had in Vagabond's House
he kept. One of them was

A little mud god with a painted face
That was given to me ... oh, long ago
By a Philippine maid in Olongapo.7

Blanding had two cats in his house, Congo and Congi. These were named for
two of the temporary wives to French officers in Siam.

A great number of the possessions he mentions were not real; for example:

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp... I'll have a nook
For a savage idol that I took
From a ruined temple in Peru,
A demon-chaser named Mang-Chu.8

This was pure word pattern, not reality; but the picture that he "loves
best of all" was real, and he still has it:

The picture that I love the best of all
Will hang alone on my study wall
Where the sunset's glow and the moon's cold gleam
Will fall on the face and make it seem
That the eyes in the picture are greeting mine,
That the lips are curved in the fine sweet line
Of the wistful, tender, provocative smile
That has stirred my heart for a wondrous while.
It's a sketch of a girl who loves too well
To tie me down to that bit of Hell
That a drifter knows when he finds he's held
By the soft strong chains that passions weld.9

In 1930, after the fall of Vagabond's House, Don was physically,
emotionally, and financially bankrupt, and he says, "It was no consolation
to me to know that I had provided my own earthquake."10

Going North to recuperate, he nearly went mad with insomnia. A young
Hawaiian musician, living near, who understood the nervous tension under
which Don was living, went to him and made him promise to go to bed. The
boy said to him: "Alohi Lani, go to bed and think you have
lomi-lomi (massage) and say this prayer: 'Lord, I do give
Thee thanks for the
abundance which is mine!'" Blanding said, cynically, that this was no
time to be giving thanks for anything, but because he had promised he did
as he was asked. First he thought of the pattern of the words, then he
remembered the blind, legless beggar he had seen at the Union station --
and he gave thanks for a strong, healthy body. He thought of his blind
friend who successfully ran a bookstore -- and he gave thanks for his
eyesight. He thought of all the people who would give anything they owned
to have their poems accepted for publication -- and he gave thanks that he
had had three books published. He was thankful for so many things that he
fell into a deep, dreamless sleep! From that time on he has said the
prayer of the Hawaiian boy every day, and is so busy "counting his assets
that he has no time to remember his liabilities".11

Of Scott Creager, the scenario writer, Don says: "In these days of
quick-sand values, of speed and mad scrambling, of finger-tip contacts,
friendship seems to have become a bit oldfashioned. I am proud and happy
to claim Scotty as that finest of all relationships, 'best
friend'."12 Creager, who has been Blanding's
secretary-companion for the past four years, says that Blanding's poetry
is the first he has ever enjoyed reading. To him, as to many people,
poetry had been something to skim through when there was nothing else at
hand to read. One night at a house party, about five years ago, Scott
picked
up Blanding's Vagabond'sHouse and read it through. It
impressed him as no other poetry had, and he was determined to meet the
author. After many attempts, he was successful. They have been close
friends ever since, and "Scotty" had the pleasure of being Don's secretary
during the writing of MemoryRoom, and the honor of naming
his favorite sketch, the lovely "Lotus Dream", included in MemoryRoom. Creager says of Don:

He is never wrapped up in himself. He gives to
his friends more than he received; as the Hawaiians
say, "two handed giving", and he hasn't any hands left
with which to receive. He is easy tempered ... seldom
has morose moods. This even temperament was accomplished
by discipline, because morbidness runs in the Blanding family.

Don is one of the best black and white artists
living. He speaks in color, although it is only in
black and white. For example, the sketch of "Pele"
fairly exudes flame ... the living lines of the drawing
show red, yellow, wild fire.13

It will be noticed that in Blanding's illustrations the profiles are very
similar. He used his own profile, variated, for the "Thousand Lives"
drawing, and has used it several other times. Most of his other heads are
the Greek profiles, humanized. The Greek head has always been the
artist's ideal of beauty, and to Blanding this chiseled symmetry is
important.

The illustration, "That's All", in LetUsDream,
shows the life candle
burning, though half gone, but still illuminating the two masks, Joy and
sadness. Blanding considers that his candle is burned half through now.

Blanding says he has no fear of death. He is, rather, a believer in
reincarnation because he feels that no one who loves life so well can
completely forsake this earth. His religion is a combination of those of
all peoples. He says: "I am essentially pagan in my approach to life; am
aware of the gods as Indians are, seeing them in wind, storms, mountains,
lightning, etc. This is probably due to early study of
mythology."14 He has a deep gratitude to the gods, and his
awareness is shown in many of his illustrations -- "Flame", "Pele", "White
Death", and others.

Blanding exhibits his sketches wherever he happens to be when they are
finished. The sketches for MemoryRoom were shown at the
Highland Hotel, where his Hollywood Studio was located. He has none of the original
drawings in his possession. They have been either sold or given away.
Creager has "Lotus Dream".

Blanding says, "I love any color so long as it is blue." His rooms are
full of blues and his friends have given his studio the name "The Blue
Room". he believes that he likes blue because the things of great spaces
-- sea, sky, mountains, distance -- are blue. He has an aversion to
closed places.

A centaur is Blanding's trademark -- he has a lapis ring on which a very
clear, fine centaur is carved. It is the only jewelry he wears. This
love for the centaur has been with him since childhood. When he was seven
or eight years of age he used to dream that he was running as a horse, yet
he was himself. He told this dream to his parents, but they thought it
was imagination. One day he saw a picture of a centaur and showed it to
his family, saying, "This is how I run in my dreams." From that time the
centaur has been his favorite symbol, designating strength, power, and
speed.

Blanding always has plants around, and when he is where there can be no
garden, he has a window box with everything in it from "hyacinths to
garlic".

One of Don's hobbies (the others are "living, laughing, and loving") is to
collect tropical fish in every kind of material -- jade, porcelain,
silver, malachite, crystal, lapis -- and material. He buys these for
himself, and friends send them to him. Many of these weird little fish
have served as models for his drawings, as they are set around his studio
among lumps of coral gathered in Tahiti, India, Hawaii, and Australia.

Despite having traveled in exotic places, and written of exotic things,
Blanding has a love of a home, and particularly of a kitchen. The lines
from "Song of the Kitchen" make people realize that though the poet's eyes
are on the stars, his feet are firmly and affectionately rooted in the
earth:

I can't forget the fragrances that rise
Like homely pleasant incense to the skies
When oven doors reveal the cake or roast,
When butter warmly swoons on golden toast.15

He always likes to go into kitchens and markets in the different
countries,
for he believes that you can know a person by how and what he eats. For
example, Hawaiians eat vast amounts of earthy foods, and they are a lusty,
earthy people. The Chinese foods are intricate and elaborate; so is the
Chinese mind. These two peoples are his favorites.

In San Francisco, "Scotty" tries not to let Don go alone to China Town
because he wants to buy everything he sees. Once, when Blanding had
deliberately neglected to take money with him, a Chinese merchant whom he
had never before seen looked at him closely and said, "You may buy; I'll
take your check". From then on Don's friends called him "the man with the
certified face".

A description of Blanding's Hollywood studio gives an insight to his
nature. The hangings are of lapis blue (his favorite shade), the couch
cover is in three shades of blue, the four high bookcases are of Crater
Lake blue. Between the bookcases is a console table on which there is a
great bowl of Mexican gourd for fruits and nuts, and a set of carved
wooden spoons and forks from Madagascar. Over this table hangs a
beautifully woven Japanese tapestry of Dragon design, and on the floor
beneath it is an immense diamond-back snake skin. The waste basket is an
authentic Chinese vegetable basket, given to him by a Chinese friend.
There is a great deal of Ildefonse pottery around, and over the door is
attached the famous Elephant Bell spoken of in his poetry. On one wall
hangs a great dragon's head incense burner. The incense (which Don buys
in China) burns constantly on the dragon's tongue, while the fumes come
out of his nostrils. There are many comfortable, roomy chairs, and a
Hikiea, a low couch, five by fourteen feet. This sort of couch is
part of any Hawaiian house, and Don always has one or two in his studios.
A big crocodile-skin portfolio, containing autographed photographs and
letters, has a place of honor. A description of "Vagabond's House as it
is in Carmel" helps to clarify the insight into Don Blanding, through the
house in which he lives in Carmel, California.

&nbsp &nbsp ... The room is all that one could want. A low ceiling,
beautiful redwood walls, small alcoves, many easy chairs, windows opening
onto the ocean, books galore, two comfortable couches, and dominating all,
the beautiful fireplace... Everywhere you look you see fishes made of
glass, porcelain, jade, copper, wood and brass... Over in the corner of a
little alcove is a curious wooden bowl known as a kava bowl. The bowl and
its sixteen legs are carved from one piece of wood, and the whole thing is
a work of art. It came from Tahiti, and was the present of an island
chief, whose punch bowl it was. Hanging just above the kava bowl is the
skin of an 18-foot rattlesnake with 14 rattles. On each side of the
alcove are little masks made of bronze, grinning horribly but amiably at
the same time. On the far wall is a lovely square of tapa cloth, a gift
from one of Don's Hawaiian friends, in appreciation of his love for
Hawaii. One of the outstanding objects in Memory Room is a large Globe of
the World. It is well fingermarked. On tables and low benches all about
the room are 50 fantastic puppets from the Chinese theater. They are
faithful reproductions of characters from old Cathay dramas. They are
priceless possessions, as they represent the Orient, Don's favorite part
of the world, which he has roamed for many years. On the floor are
scattered Indian rugs of the brightest hues, and scattered about on the
rugs are many small tables, each with its load of drawings, poems,
letters, stories, typewriters, pipes, jars of tobacco, quaint relics of
many an adventure, and books, always books. Everyone who is acquainted
with Don knows that his favorite color is blue. Deep blue, light blue,
the blue of stormy seas, the faded blue of old tapestries -- all of them
he loves, and surrounds himself with his favorite color until the room
takes on a most pleasant look.16

Blanding went to Taos, New Mexico, for the first time in 1932. He
remained seven months, and liked the place so well that he returned in
February, 1936, to remain six months. He enjoys Taos because of its
"vast, uncluttered distances, highness, and beauty". People there strip
life of its non-essentials -- the majority of them have no telephone and
radio, use open wood fires, spend most of their time in the sunshine and
moonlight, live in native adobe houses, and are free of the uncomfortable
restrictions of conventional city life. This is the sort of living Don
prefers. He says: "I go to Taos for a spiritual dry-cleaning".

During the summer of 1936 he was merely "free-wheeling" over the
Southwest, and while making trips he gathered material to be used in
future writing. He went to the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns (which he
had seen, and of which he had written), Mesa Verde National Park,
Yellowstone Park, and he motored through various other parts of the West.
He is at present in Honolulu. He says:

In January and February of last year Vagabond's House was a studio in
Hollywood; from March until August it was an adobe house in Taos, New
Mexico; during August and September it was a blue roadster with a
tarpaulin, collapsible bed, folding stove and a good supply of grub on the
road from border to border, Mexico to Canada and west to the sea through
Yellowstone Park, Glacier National, Rainier, Columbia River, Crater Lake,
the Giant Redwood forest, Yosemite, Bryce and Zion parks, and finally
Carmel. Since September the house has been a snug cottage by the sea in
Carmel.17

Blanding has always been a follower of hunches. He thinks out rapidly and
thoroughly, but then flips a coin. He has always been willing to gamble
with life, and all of his important decisions have been made in a short
time. Ross C. Miller says: "His next urge is towards Norway. But he
candidly admits, he may just as likely start for Tegucigalpa, Zamboanga or
Zanzibar. He guides his life almost entirely by chance. . .
."18

In the last seven years Blanding has lectured in nearly every large town
in the country, more than once in many cities, among them Detroit,
Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. He does not use lecture
notes, for he prefers to talk informally with his audience. His platform
attitude is completely spontaneous. He usually reads several of his poems
to get his audience in the mood for travel, then tells a few amusing
incidents before proceeding with his serious lecture. His audiences are
always attentive, appreciative, and sincere. Whenever he has had a return
lecture his audience has been nearly doubled.

A deep, resonant voice which carries well, and is pleasing to hear,
inspires audiences to request readings long after the usual lecture is
over. In his talks, Blanding usually reads "Names are Ships" first, to
get the listeners in a traveling mood. Then he intersperses his talk with
"Dream In Blue" or "Memories In Red" for color' "Wonder" for a Credo poem;
"Glamour's Gone", "Aloha Oe", "Baby Street", and other poems pertaining
to Hawaii; "Epitaph", and request numbers. "Vagabond's House" is always
requested as a finishing number.

At Robinson's (the "Marshall Field's" of Los Angeles) only one other person of note
besides Blanding has been asked to return year after year, sometimes
several times in one year, to autograph books or prints and meet the
public. This other person is the charming tom-boy friend of Don's, Amelia
Earhart. He wrote "Flight" to her after her first Pacific air triumph.

Don says when he talks he "rattles like a loose bolt", and so he does, but
he never says anything that is not worth stopping all other conversation
to hear. Besides being an inspired talker, he is a remarkable listener.
He does not monopolize the conversation intentionally, but it is always so
much more interesting to listen to him that he is usually the center of
all group conversations.

Blanding is never ponderous; he is always entertaining, witty, gay --
interspersing his serious comments with clever phrases and apt words. (He
is most ingenious at coining words.) Above all, he is considerate and
tactful. Whatever sorrows he has had he does not willingly mention, yet
in his writings one can see that the sunshine of his life is flecked with
many shadows.

He always appears to be carelessly dressed (never in any color but blue),
but it is only a seeming carelessness that arises from discriminating
nature.

There is never the slightest sign in him of the self-conscious author. He
is himself at all times -- a big, healthy, cheerful boy, grown just a
little older in years than he enjoys realizing, but still a youth at
heart. Middle age, even old age, hold no fears for him, for he is
confident that his mind and heart will always be young. D. H. Lawrence
once said (and might well have said it of Don Blanding): "It is not the
incidents which befall a character that are important, but what that
character is". Blanding's beautiful, generous character predominates
everything about him as a man and as a poet.

Nettle Mae Jones says of Blanding:

... His unshaken belief in his dreams has taken him far places and batiked
his life in strange design, but atop of his faith he keeps a humorous,
quizzical attitude towards life. What better shows his whimsical
ambidexterous imagination than this terse autobiography: "I was the
love-child of a flea and a lightening bug, born on a windy night, cradled
in a cob-web, tutored by thistledown. I hitched my wagon to a falling
star and my road maps were all drawn with disappearing ink."19

George O'Brien, the actor, once taught Blanding a lesson he will never
forget. One day, after lunch with friends at the Brown Derby in North
Hollywood, O'Brien was besieged by fans wanting his autograph. He was
very obliging, and one of his companions said to him, "Doesn't all this
bother you?" O'Brien replied, "When they cease to want my autograph, it
will hurt and bother me." Blanding, too, feels proud to have people
"bother" him in that way. He loves people, and feels that if they are
kind enough to tell him they enjoy his writing and drawing he should be as
generous as they. Politeness and congeniality are high lights in his
character.

Blanding lives for his friends, his readers -- he writes for them, draws
for them, giving them as much of his affection and joiedevivre as he can, and when he dies he hopes that everyone will miss
him, but wants none to mourn him. He has written his own "Epitaph":

Do not carve on stone or wood,
"He was honest" or "He was good"
Write in smoke on a passing breeze
Seven words ... and the words are these,
Telling all that a volume could,
"He lived, he laughed and ... he understood."20